


Once in a While

by KayNight



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Post Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 22:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3745240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayNight/pseuds/KayNight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A convenience store robbery turned hostage crisis, a mouthful of glass, and a realization a long time coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once in a While

**Author's Note:**

> written to: arsonist's lullabye by hozier and my love by sia.

"Matt, I need you to stay with me. Listen to my voice, focus on me." 

It had been six months of him showing up beaten, bloody and broken at her window, six months of lingering touches and soft laughter, of jokes at his expense and thank yous, of trading stories and beers (the few times when he wasn't completely drugged to hell on her couch) and of course, dodging around what could have been, what had been, and what could never be. 

But that was the past six months, and tonight had been a spectacularly shitty night, getting out onto the streets already fucked straight to hell from his last brawl with the latest bastard trying to fill the power vacuum Fisk left behind (started him six feet deep and he only dug his grave deeper). 

Despite his heightened senses, his training, his endless rounds against the punching bag, against the mats, against his own demons, Matt Murdock is still a man, and men make mistakes (some men more frequently than others, but that's besides the point)-

and tonight he fucked up big, and got fucked up something terrible in return. 

Hostage situations don't always go to shit, but when they do, they fucking go off the rails like nobody's business.

Matt may be able to take a beating, may be able to work past scarlet stained teeth and the agony of torn muscles and shredded sides- but the kid, barely into her teens probably and scrawnier than Matt was at 12, couldn't take a punch from a man who must be somewhere around two times her size and outclassing her in weight three times over, she shouldn't have had to take that punch (he should've been quicker, should've heard the sirens sooner, should've pulled on his second skin a second faster). 

But no matter how quick he did run, how fast he had been- nothing he did could remove the damage already done to that girl, nothing he could do to put the bloodied broken teeth back together that he heard scatter and scrape across the floor, nothing to settle the horrified screaming of her brother, thrown into the wall just to get him to shut up. 

It was a convenience store robbery turned hostage crisis when the police showed up a minute too early for the two 30 something year old assholes to escape with their cash, trapping them inside the store with the elderly owner (who they wasted no time shooting point blank in the head) and the teenage girl with her little brother, who was still had a carton of milk clasped in his tiny fist.

Matt's no hero, but when the robbers lay a hand on her brother and the girl screams and shouts and fights like a bat out of hell, clawing and snapping at her captor, her beaded braids lashing and whipping at his face, Matt can't help but think that she is, in all of her shrill bloodied glory. 

It was quick work to disarm the man with the shotgun who chucked the boy into a rack of candy bars, but it was the second one, the one who had the death grip on that damn ferocious girl, who made everything go straight to hell. 

It was only after, lying on Claire's sagging couch like he had done so many night before, listening to her voice commanding him to stay awake, to stay with her, did Matt realize how fucking cocky he'd been, how easily he had let himself forget that the realm of danger didn't stop with the crazy power hungry fucks at the top, didn't stop now that he had a suit that could protect him bullets and knives and fists. 

And so here he is, neck slashed away and face gouged, bits of glass and dust and dirt all buried into his torn flesh so that he can't focus, can't breathe- having your head repeatedly smashed into a mirror and then dragged across its shattered surface is something to never, ever, ever put on your to do list. 

Also never to have on your to do list: having your arm broken by a cash register, a metal counter, and probably whatever is currently buried an inch deep in his elbow. 

So yeah, definitely not one of his better nights, but he'll be okay, and not because he can take a punch (or a cash register) or because he saved two kids scrappy enough to help him take down the man that wrecked their night and some of their teeth (though that did help), but because he feels soft cool fingers tugging off his cowl and brushing back his sweat damp hair, he hears the snap of rubber gloves and smells the (somehow comforting) scent of latex. 

And although all he can seem to taste is the copper in the air, in his glass filled mouth, he knows that this too shall pass and he'll wake the next morning to the same soft words he's hearing over and over again, but he also knows that tomorrow morning there's going to be a change, he will make a change, because he can't keep living off of the feeling of her fingers ghosting over his torn flesh, off of 'seeing' her once in a while and only when he needs her because that phrase "when he needs her" and "once in a while" just don't click because he always needs her, needs her laughter, her quick humor and her scathing remarks, her steady presence and her love because he nearly died tonight at the hands of a convenience store criminal and someone he considered a small fish in a very large pond, and all of a sudden all of that invincibility he felt after taking down Fisk is gone and he can't keep living half a life without her. 

So tomorrow morning, they'll talk. But, for now, he'll listen, because he can never, ever, get enough of her.


End file.
